I buy my meat at the meat section of the Queen Victoria Market.As a pensioner i am on a limited budget but if you go there on a Sat arvo you can get great bargins.Last week i bought 2 kilo of mince for $9 and 7 lamb shanks for $10 and a tray of steaks for $12.People need to shop around and look for the best bargins they can.I would never buy mince at Coles or any other supermarket,overpriced and also sprayed with that red stuff so it looks good.

This is not an individual issue. Sure, there are people like you and me that can circumvent some of the outrageous prices by getting out and buying in bulk.
The point is, why doesn't the ACCC do their job and protect the large percentage of pensioners who are very old, maybe disabled, and cannot get out to take advantage of farmers markets, bulk buying, etc?

How can the Woolworths/Coles cartel justify paying farmers $3 a kilo per steer, and selling minced beef at $13-14+?

There are profits, and also pure greed. Guess which one applies here..............

Heil Kameraden.

I completely agree with you on the toothless tiger approach of the ACCC. I think my "tone of voice" wasn't conveyed properly and while i did write about my individual circumstances on getting the meat on the table, ie home butchering. I meant that reference to be for those of us here who have thought about getting a couple of sheep for the table, but have never quite "gotten around to it" as it were. Because of either work commitments, space, spare time, or as it completely understandable just plain terrified of the task.

Exponentially through the years supermarkets have enjoyed more and more "sheeple" that have been shunning the axe, rifle and knife for the expensive little neat packages of "meat" (and i use the term loosely) to able bodied people. I DO NOT mean the older generation, as they are the ones trying to tell us about how to save a small fortune in supermarkets by talking to us about how they used to hunt and fish. Not purely for sport, but to put some food on the table.

Go out there and see if it is at all possible for you to obtain non commercial meat. Its not nearly as hard as you might think. You can find a wealth of information on the net. Or try the "Shooter" and "Hunter" magazines printed by the SSAA.

And also remember to offer the Grandparents and other elderly family members a nice roast or two, i'm sure they won't say no.

I buy my meat at the meat section of the Queen Victoria Market.As a pensioner i am on a limited budget but if you go there on a Sat arvo you can get great bargins.Last week i bought 2 kilo of mince for $9 and 7 lamb shanks for $10 and a tray of steaks for $12.People need to shop around and look for the best bargins they can.I would never buy mince at Coles or any other supermarket,overpriced and also sprayed with that red stuff so it looks good.

I agree with Hobbit. If you shop smart, you can save a lot of money. I only buy meat when it's on special. Same goes for a lot of things. Buy when it's on special and buy in bulk.

As for the Coles/Woolworths thing, the tragedy is that both of these companies are Australian-owned. Yet they've been allowed to rip off ordinary Australians en masse. It hurts me to say it, but perhaps the best solution is to actually support the German-owned supermarket chain Aldi's who frequently undercut the prices of Coles/Woolworths.

In the long run, this will help to bring down the prices charged by Coles/Woolworths to a more reasonable level. I look forward to Aldi's setting up in Perth.

__________________

A single truth can shatter a thousand lies.

No nation or peoples can tolerate more than a small portion of alien peoples or races in their midst and still expect to survive racially and/or culturally - Betty Luks

I was very intrigued to hear the comments of well-known pro-Australian businessman Dick Smith on the SBSTV programme Insight a couple of weeks ago.

According to Smith, Australians are patriotic shoppers, but they need reminding to be. They will buy Australian-made and Australian-owned, but only with a lot of help from marketing and advertising. Otherwise they just go back to either buying whatever's cheapest, or whatever brands they've traditionally bought or whatever occupies the best shelf space.

Because of this mentality, Smith believes the cut-price German-owned supermarket chain Aldi's will eventually come to dominate the retail market in Australia, and that Coles and Woolies will be in big trouble. Coles and Woolies may be dominating market share at the moment and may be ripping people off in various ways, but Smith thinks this is far preferable than Aldi's taking massive profits out of Australia.

The CEO of Choice magazine was also on the programme and he was much less pessimistic than Smith, saying that Coles and Woolies are too well entrenched in Australia, and that Aldi's will increase competition and that this will deliver better outcomes for consumers.

Aldi is German owned,so the money goes to good people, however queues are longer generally but still they have good prices.. It sucks that you aren't supplied with plastic bags unless you buy them. Don't expect alot of choice but they way I put it , no matter what the package looks like it goes in the bin anyway.

If I don't shop with Aldi, I go to the local markets going on a Sunday will result in you getting meat and produce cheaper as it gets reduced.

I worked for Woolworth's for years. They are big enough now that even with some of there company policies being against the law they don't care. Every week they would send a staff member to coles and fill out a 15 page list of prices for price fixing which they actually got fined for a few years ago but the fine is nothing to them.

They often sell items under cost to drive out competition and they contently break laws left right and center. I don't spend my money in there stores they disgust me. They use and abuse there staff then replace them with the next lot of 16 year olds. Together with Coles they own over 85% of the supermarket stores i believe and with profits in the the BILLIONS there pretty much untouchable. There only concern is profit, fracking disgusting.

I worked for Woolworth's for years. They are big enough now that even with some of there company policies being against the law they don't care. Every week they would send a staff member to coles and fill out a 15 page list of prices for price fixing which they actually got fined for a few years ago but the fine is nothing to them.

They often sell items under cost to drive out competition and they contently break laws left right and center. I don't spend my money in there stores they disgust me. They use and abuse there staff then replace them with the next lot of 16 year olds. Together with Coles they own over 85% of the supermarket stores i believe and with profits in the the BILLIONS there pretty much untouchable. There only concern is profit, fracking disgusting.

Or they employ Asians or Indians or Muslims as they just work and shut up and be happy... But even going to a local market independent of any corporate activity how many Arabs, Turks and Asians do you see hoarding stuff?

I guess you could go to a local grower's market and buy all the seconds fruit with a couple blemishes on it for cheap from the grower..(how many actual growers do you see that aren't white?) apart from doing it like that what choice do you have? IGA?Foodworks? They are both "rip off central "if there ever was a place.
Aldi is probably your best bet.. unless you exclusively support the local white Butcher and Greengrocer etc.